Dante
As soon as I get into the clubhouse and see Dogma’s face, the look of panic and bemusement on it when he sees how quickly I pace into the bar, I realize I’ve let my hopes get way too fuckin’ high. Dogma sits at one of the tables in the bar, the girl next to him, lolling in her chair, jaw slack, eyes opening and closing. I recognize her only vaguely, having not kept up much with the club girls this past year. She’s blonde, and young, with a red flushed face wearing an overcoat which covers her from neck to shin.
“Where is he?” I bark, looking around the bar for Ogre, but he isn’t here. It’s just the three of us, and a few of the club girls lingering near the doorway, Angelica at the front of them. “Where the fuck is he?” I repeat, when Dogma doesn’t respond.
“Where’s who, Boss?” he asks, voice pitched high, looking more confused than ever.
“Ogre. Where is Ogre?”
I am standing over him now, staring down.
Dogma shakes his head slowly. “I never said Ogre was here.”
“Yes you fuckin’—”
I stop, taking a step back, thinking back to our phone call.
Goddamn it, he’s right. He really didn’t say Ogre was here. All he said was that Ogre was the one who’d bothered Carina. And I assumed, like a jackass, that that meant he was here. But if Ogre’s done something wrong, it’s up to me as the President to oversee it. So where the fuck is he?
“Where is he, Dogma?” I ask, voice deep and gravelly. Even I can hear the note of potential violence in it. Several of the club girls back away. I hear them, their scampering feet, and even Dogma takes a step back.
“Let me explain, Boss,” he says. “I’ll tell you all of it.”
I think about cracking him across the jaw, just giving into my rage and hooking him to the floor, but I can’t. I have Sandra to think about.
“Tell it quick,” I say.
Dogma speaks fast, words tripping over each other.
When he’s done, I know that Ogre has truly lost it now, has finally come completely unhinged. So Ogre rode down to Lawrence, kidnapped Sandra, rode back here, and then when he got back he saw that he and Carina were the only two in the club, so the sick bastard decided to ply her with drugs. He loaded her up on cocaine and weed and whisky, and then finally chloroformed her and tried to assault her. That was when Dogma came in, and Ogre jumped out of the window. Carina was out of it, but she managed to tell Dogma that the man was big, so Dogma took her out on the street to look for Ogre, and when they saw him going into a motel, Dogma sneaked up behind him and placed his pistol against the man’s head. Then they went to one of our safe houses, where Dogma debated killing him. In the end, he just banished him from the club.
“You did . . . wait, what? You kicked him out of the club? You, the fuckin’ VP, kicked somebody out of my club?”
“He tried to rape her, Boss,” Dogma says, without any apology in his voice.
“Fuck, whatever.” That will have to slide for now. “Did you see a baby, Dogma?”
“A baby?” Dogma tilts his head at me.
I leap across the room and grab the front of his jacket, lifting him off his feet, and bring my face close to his. His eyes go wide and he begins to struggle, but I just hold him there. “A baby! A fuckin’ baby! Did you see one with Ogre?”
“Put me down, Boss,” Dogma says.
I drop him, and he answers my question.
“No, I didn’t see a baby. I guess there could’ve been one in the motel room, though.”
“And he’s long gone from that by now. Fuckin’ hell. I wished you’d just killed the sack of shit.”
“What’s going on, Boss?” Dogma asks, rubbing his chest where I grabbed him.
Dogma has never seen me like this. It must be freaking him the hell out.
In as few words as possible, I explain to Dogma about Kayla and my baby, Sandra.
“Did Ogre say where he was going to go?” I say, once I’ve explained it all.
Dogma shakes his head. “Not to me, but Carina told me he talked for a while as he was—as he was getting ready to do what he wanted with her, I guess.”
“Talked. Right. About what?”
Dogma shrugs. “No idea.”
I curse, and then pull a seat up opposite Carina. She sways from side to side in her chair as though her body is not strong enough to support her. Her eyes are big and blue, her pupils dilated to the extreme, two round saucers.
“What’s her name, Dogma?” I ask quietly. She doesn’t hear a thing.
“Carina—”
“No, her real fuckin’ name.”
“Oh, uh . . .” He stops, thinking, and then says, “It’s Violet.”
“Right. Go and make some coffee. Strong stuff.”
“Alright.”
Dogma leaves us.
I reach forward and lift the girl’s chin with my hand. Even touching a woman like this, completely non-sexually, feels strange. That’s goddamn weird for a man like me who has spent his life touching women, but I guess that’s what happens when you start down with this love stuff.
“Violet,” I say. “I need you to listen to me. My name is Dante DeCowl. I’m the President of the War Riders. You’re in our clubhouse. You recently became one of our girls. Do you remember that?”
“War Riders’a club a motorbike club,” she mumbles, eyes flitting open and closed.
“That’s right,” I say, holding her face so that she’s looking at me. “Violet, I want you to open your eyes for me. Can you do that?”
I force myself to stay calm. I wish I could just shake the answers out of her, but she’s too drugged up to respond to that, and plus she’s just had a horrible experience which tough questioning would only make worse, probably making her close up. I take a long breath as she struggles to open her eyes. Finally, she does, and I see the moment of focus as her eyes come to rest on me. Not the most appealing sight, a bearded, panicked, full-of-rage man, but she doesn’t seem too scared.
“What is my name, Violet?” I ask, seeing if she can remember.
“Demon,” she mutters. “Demon the Demon Man.”
Close enough.
“Okay. Good. That’s really good. Now, can you tell me what Ogre said to you before he climbed out of the window?”
“Gave me lots of coke.” Her words come as one long stream. Gavemelotsofcoke. So I have to listen closely. Dogma lays the coffee down on the table. Her nose wrinkles. “Stinks,” she says.
“Drink it,” I say, and now there’s command in my voice.
That seems to get through to her, as it does to most of the club girls. Even in her state, she hears my tone of voice, sits up a little straighter, and allows Dogma—at a gesture from me—to help her with the coffee. I wait impatiently as she drinks it down, as life seems to return to her, if only a little. I need to know where Ogre is. That is all. Ogre and Sandra. Nothing else matters. Waiting even a minute passively drives me crazy. I look down at the floor, at the ruined pool cue and the toothpicks, thinking I’ll pick up a toothpick and start chewing it, I’m so desperate to actually be doing something other than just sitting here.
“Okay,” Violet says, and she speaks more like a person now. Dogma places the coffee mug down and steps back, watching. Violet’s eyelids no longer flicker as though she’s on the verge of falling asleep. “Okay, okay.”
I lean forward. “Tell me what he said.”
She looks scared, glancing around the room, and I’m reminded for a second of the way Kayla used to glance around the room like that, as though always looking for an exit. But I blot that out of my mind. I can’t afford sympathy right now.
“He said lots of things.” Violet shivers, despite the big overcoat. “He said lots of strange things. He said . . . oh . . . he said I was the daughter of a priest, and that I’d . . . I don’t understand . . . and that I’d profaned . . . I think that was the word, and . . . and . . .” She shivers again.
“Not the Bible shit,” I say. “That don’t matter. Did he mention a baby, or where he was going after he was—done with you?” That last part is blunt, but I don’t have time for softness.
“No,” she says, and I feel like I deflate in the chair. But then she squints, as though in deep thought. I wait for what feels like an eternity for her drugged-up mind to work, and then she says, “He mentioned a baby, yes. He did. I’m sure of it. Yes, he did. He did!” She looks around like a kid proud at solving a difficult math problem.
“Good,” I coax. “That’s good. What did he say?”
She squints again. I struggle not to let out a growling sigh. It’s like I can see her thoughts behind her eyes, slowly forming. She grips the edge of the seat of the chair, staring off into the middle distance as though reliving the events of earlier this evening. I have to give her that, at least; she’s damn brave for facing it so soon. Or maybe she’s just too drugged up to care as much as she otherwise would.
“Yes!” she exclaims, looking around with that kidlike hunger for approval again. “He said that he had a little package at his motel room. I asked what it was—I think I was—yes—yes—I was trying to distract him from . . . you know . . . and he said he had a little baby in his room, and that he was going to use it to get a whore who took his coat. I didn’t understand. He said he came back here to Missouri to tempt the Big Bad Wolf back, and then he giggled. It freaked me out. He said he was back here to tempt the Big Bad Wolf, and then he was going to turn around and go straight back to Lawrence to get the coat-stealing whore. Woah—hey!” She leans back as I leap to my feet.
In a matter of seconds, I’m back out in the winter cold, and in a matter more seconds I’m on the bike, revving the engine.
It’s only when I’ve been riding for about ten minutes—speeding at least one-twenty—that I realize I left my cell back at the club.